Auction Leagues intrigue me....

[RizzeeDizzee]

When I did an auction league back when I was first learning fantasy hockey, it took me three years to get my footing. The learning curve is steep but then I found them to be kind of "been there, done that" after a few seasons. Nothing against them though - they're a lot of fun.

[HasekRoll]

@HasekRoll - I wasn't looking at joining an auction league this year as I have more than enough other pools to keep me busy!

This year is strictly a research year to see if an auction league is something I would join in the future. If you are ok with it, feel free to post your write up on how auction pools work and strategy.

For sure, I just need to do some compiling and editing and I'll post it within a few days.

[Mr. Guru]

Without getting into too much detail.....it goes something like this

At the auction draft, you have the ability to sign your player for x amount of years. Id like it to be capped at 6-8 years, personally.

For example, you got if you got McDavid at $20 you would probably sign him for 8 years.

After 8 years, you have 2 options:

Option 1, McDavid becomes a free agent, he goes back in the pool and the highest bidder will get him for whatever he went for and however many years he signed him for. But you have the ability to get him -$x cheaper but for the same amount of years the other GM was willing to give him.

OR, option 2

You can keep McDavid at his current contract but next year HE must go back in the pool and you cannot keep him.


Depending on the entry draft and how many rounds there are, you could assign a $ amount to the round and thats what those players are worth for the first 3 years.

[HasekRoll]

@HasekRoll - I wasn't looking at joining an auction league this year as I have more than enough other pools to keep me busy!

This year is strictly a research year to see if an auction league is something I would join in the future. If you are ok with it, feel free to post your write up on how auction pools work and strategy.

Here's what I wrote for my league:



You start out with a budget and each team takes turns nominating players to bid on. For at least the first 1/2 of the draft, you don't want to be the one to nominate the players you are targeting. This is because the more players that go ahead of your target player, the less the winning bid you will need to land your target player and it helps conserve your bidding power. The nature of the auction draft makes strategy very flexible as you can choose to splurge on a few elite players but give up control/bidding power in the middle/end of the draft, or you can sit back to start and stack your team with players that might go in say the 2nd to 5th round in traditional snake drafts. However, being too passive is a far more costly mistake to make than overpaying (up to a point) for a few players early on. Good budget management will give you the best chance to land your late round sleepers and at better prices. Towards the end of the draft, it slowly morphs into standard draft as the teams with open roster spots can't outbid each other with only their $1 max bids remaining.

An auction in conjunction with point-based scoring (as opposed to categories/roto) makes it fairly straightforward to create a guide for yourself of how much you are willing to pay for a particular player because you can determine "I project this player will score X fantasy points and I'm willing to pay $Y per fantasy point." But also one must factor in how the end of the draft will play out with how many $1 players you and the league as a whole will be drafting. Unless your league was drafting extremely aggressively, many of these players have similar value to top waiver wire pick-ups and basically have equivalent value. So let's say these players score about 300 fantasy points based on the scoring system. So then the math problem becomes "I'm willing to pay $Y per every fantasy point above Z fantasy points (300 in this example)."

You can really get into it if you have some basic Excel ability. Though it is much harder to determine value in Category/Roto. I'm sure there are more detailed guides/articles on strategy and how to go about creating a price guide, but here's a couple of links from a site that seems to be from the 90s.

http://www.rotosource.com/guide17.html
http://www.rotosource.com/guide16.html

[hockeyrobot]

but I don't really know much about them.

If anyone can redirect me to a good source that explains a typical league structure (how they are set up, how the auction/bidding happens, how the dollar values are set, etc.) and typical league rules I would appreciate it.

If there isn't a definitive source out there in fantasy land, any insight the Dobber community can add would be appreciated.

I would love to try an auction some day but find it pretty intimidating. I would want to do one with a league that has never done one. I feel like there are obvious advantages out there that I don't know about,